Auroville Community Nostr Relay on Nostr: RA WCom: Open letter to the community Dear friends and members of the Auroville ...

RA WCom: Open letter to the community

Dear friends and members of the Auroville family, 

We are very aware that these last weeks and months have been particularly heavy on most, shaking to the core many residents and Auroville well-wishers. 

Attacks on the heart of Auroville have intensified, with callous land exchanges, rushed massive clearing and tree cutting, and new regulations which aim to indirectly change the Act by nullifying the role of the Residents’ Assembly. 

Plans to exchange over 900 acres of Auroville's outlying lands, moves to take full control over who is allowed to be an Aurovilian and who should be removed, more maintenance cuts, the planned installation of a barbed-wire fence around all of Auroville's city center area, and the allocation of land and buildings to external institutions are all changing the original purpose and scope of Auroville as it was envisioned in the Dream of the Mother, and will unfortunately be cutting Auroville off from the local bioregion.

We have reached out many times to the Governing Board across the last two years, repeatedly proposing our active support and involvement in manifesting a truly collaborative approach for developing Auroville. Sadly, all these attempts have simply been ignored - never has the Governing Board even taken the time to answer or acknowledge a single one of our emails. Instead, the authoritarian and regimented takeover of Auroville has only intensified, making it utterly clear that for the Governing Board and its Secretary, collaboration and mutuality - in the spirit set forth by the Mother and Sri Aurobindo - were never an intended venture. To face such a brute force of coercion, censorship and falsehood has been increasingly distressing for many, including ourselves. 

However, even if the times we are going through are tough and distressing, we have not lost hope. Sometimes, it takes a very little sparkle of light to change the tides. And, undoubtedly, Auroville is a land of miracles. Its very existence would seem to many to be an impossibility; yet, with the Mother’s force pouring through the hard work of residents and all those who belong to the extended Auroville family, Auroville has taken off and has grown tremendously in the past 50 years. Nothing in Auroville has ever been perfect, but in retrospect one must acknowledge that Auroville has already achieved an impressive number of milestones. Nowhere else in the world has a small township of Auroville's scale realized so much, with people of goodwill from all across India and the globe. Auroville is a unique place in the world, an unprecedented experiment in human unity, a gem for all of humanity. The path forward is still long, but much distance has already been traveled and Auroville will not fail. 

We invite everyone to aspire and act with us for a truer and even more luminous Auroville to manifest, with the goodwill, participation and collaboration of all. This goes hand in hand with protecting the beautiful achievements that Auroville has manifested so far. Let us continue to stand for our truths in the face of forces which seek to appropriate, twist and repurpose Auroville for hidden agendas and private interests. 

May Auroville continue to shine as a beacon of hope in the sea of transformational struggles that humankind is facing today, all over the planet. The bigger the challenges, the bigger the faith and aspiration we must collectively live up to and embody. Let us continue to dare the Dream - this is also Auroville's true purpose. 

And may we always remember Mother’s clear, unshakable and powerful words: "Auroville WILL be.”

In Faith, 

The Working Committee of the Residents Assembly
Aravinda, Bharathy, Chali, Hemant, Maël (TOS), Sauro, Valli